One of the internet’s evergreen obsessions is deciphering what’s going on in men’s heads. You’ve probably seen the memes.
This stems from, I think, the fact that women are generally more expressive than men and therefore wonder what our problem is. Our silence is sometimes assigned ulterior motives. If you ask a man what he’s thinking about, there’s a 90% chance he’ll say, “nothing.” And that may be true! Sometimes our minds are a vacant space.
But often we’re thinking about something so left field, it can be accurately dismissed as nothing. It’s not truly nothing. It’s just not relevant to anything going on in our lives or the world. It’s empty calories. Randomly remembering a funny scene. Pondering fantasy football moves. Mapping out in careful detail how to handle winning a mega lottery.
The Roman Empire trend from 2023—gads, has it been 2 years?—posited that men think about Ancient Rome on the regular.1 It’s a cute meme because it sheds further light into the dark recesses of the male mind. And it’s kinda true. I do think a lot of men are fascinated by the Romans. They ruled one of the largest empires the world has ever known and also had gladiators. But the meme ultimately rings false.
I’m a history nerd who plays D&D. Ancient Rome isn’t just in my wheelhouse—it should be the entire thing. But I barely think about Rome. I’m more likely to think about heroically saving my family and complete strangers from a surprise terrorist attack. I bet if you ask a dude in your life, he’ll say the same.
I blame movies.
